Israel Bombs Palestinians in Beach Tents in Gaza

[Celerity]

“This area is made up of tents sheltering civilians—displaced people, people who lived through oppression, humiliation, famine, war and siege. And the whole place was bombed.”

https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/israel-bombs-gaza-coastline-tents-beach-displaced-palestinians

Jun 25, 2026


Members of the Yassin family next to their destroyed tents on the coastline west of Gaza City after an Israeli airstrike on June 24, 2026. Screenshot of video by Abdel Qader Sabbah.

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip—Eleven-year-old Ahmed Al-Raqab was playing outside his family tent pitched on Gaza’s sandy coastline in Al-Mawasi, west of Khan Younis, on Wednesday when the Israeli missile struck, killing him and severely wounding several others. “The children were playing and they fired a missile directly on them,” Ahmed’s father, Sabri Al-Raqab, said, sobbing as he knelt on the floor of Nasser hospital with his arms across his son’s dead body in a final embrace. “He was carrying a watermelon. What was this child’s crime? He picked up a watermelon and they fired at him. Is he a fighter? He’s not a fighter. He’s a child.”

Overcome with grief, Al-Raqab buried his face into his son’s, which was caked with blood, and wept uncontrollably. In a nearby room, a six year old child wounded in the same attack screamed in pain as blood from a gaping wound in his right eye covered his cheek and ear. He was carried into the hospital in the arms of a teenage relative who laid him down shouting, “Come attend to this boy. We are losing the boy, we are losing him.” The child’s grandfather, Ahmed Al-Jarjawi, stood nearby, the front of his jalabiya stained deep red with blood. “We were just sitting and the strike landed next to the our tent and hit three other tents,” Ahmed Al-Jarjawi told Drop Site News. “This child lost his eye. I was wounded here,” he said pointing to his chest. “My son’s wife was also wounded in the upper part of her leg.”



The latest Israeli attacks on children came a day after a UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry released a report that concluded, “Israeli authorities and security forces have deliberately targeted Palestinian children, resulting in genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in the Gaza Strip.” The UN inquiry said that during the first two years of the Israeli assault, over 20,000 children were killed and more than 44,000 injured. Since the so-called ceasefire went into effect in October 2025, Israel has killed at least 265 children and wounded hundreds more in Gaza, according to findings released last week by the UN children’s agency UNICEF. “During a period supposedly defined by restraint and protection, a child has been killed, on average, every single day for more than eight months,” UNICEF spokesperson James Elder said in a statement. “That is an absurd and devastating figure.”



Israel’s attacks on Wednesday targeted several areas of Gaza’s coastline where thousands of displaced Palestinians live in dilapidated tent encampments. The encampments by the sea lie as far as possible from the “yellow line” where Israeli troops are stationed and are steadily encroaching further westward. Yet Israel has repeatedly bombed Gaza’s beaches, killing Palestinians living in the barest part of the enclave. One of the airstrikes overnight hit a tent encampment on the coastline west of Gaza City. Israel warned of the strike minutes before, prompting families to flee towards the sea before the missile struck, destroying several tents and leaving a massive crater in the sand.

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